The foodways of Alabama barbecue are second only to Texas for their primacy in the world of USA smoked meats. When I was a teenager growing up in Birmingham I raced across the state on my Honda Interceptor motorbike trying as hard as possible to eat from every smokehouse in the Yellowhammer state.

I didn’t even come close.

In Alabama there are hundreds of restaurants devoted to cooking animals of the woods and fields over hardwood fires. In Texas there are thousands.

Let’s not forget that Texas is five times as big.

There is one barbecue category where Alabama manhandles the land of the Yellow Rose and that is sauce.

When I first started ranging across Texas around ’91 almost none of my favorite restaurants even offered sauce. You could get your fill of pickles, onions, avocados and yellow cheese but sauce was not on the menu.

Unlike in ‘Bama where potent jus’, gravies and concoctions are considered a key component of the barbecue experience.

Like Rountree’s Hickory Pit’s white sauce. Rountree’s is now known as Miss Myra’s but the name change did not go along with a recipe shift in their world-beating sauce.